The traditional festival celebrations earlier had many aspects of incidental and perceptual learning about aesthetic, expressive and visual skills through drawing and painting motifs of the festivals.

ON THE eve of Diwali, one such motif used to be drawing earthen or clay lamps on walls or floors in continuous line drawing style. Unfortunately that tradition has disappeared from the urban culture with the commercialization of festivals. Now, stickers and wallpapers are available in the market as replacements.

However, there is a need to revive the culture of surface continuous line drawings of festival motifs. A continuous line drawing is the contour or outline sketch of a subject by drawing a line continuously without lifting the pencil. It emphasizes the shape of the subject rather than the detail.

Simple continuous line drawing conveys shape with visual pleasure contained in simplicity. In this type of drawing, one looks at the subject and the paper to move the medium over the paper for creating a silhouette or a shape of the subject.

In otherwords, in such a drawing, the eye moves along the contour of the subject as his or her pencil moves along the paper. The practice of this kind of drawing develops the visual skill of identifying and underlying the structure of the subject and relating forms or shapes.

In many interior villages, as a part of folk art and culture, the walls and floor drawings of various types of diyas or clay lamps is still done as a continuous line drawing.

Try copying the continuous line drawings of diyas shown in the inset picture. Start drawing by beginning from the dot and moving the medium, say a sketch pen, on paper without lifting it till the line ends at the cross.